Forword to Volume 1 The destruction of the laboratory Two-Volume Russian Edition published in 1993 & English translation ebook published May 2nd 2009

For over 30 years – from October 1952 to September 1985 – the medical establishment hushed up my discovery. It did everything to trample on and destroy the strongest weapon in the fight against many modern diseases. I was called a charlatan, a schizophrenic and a raving nutter, among other names. They tried to poison me three times, and organised two car crashes. There were several attempts to put me in a psychiatric hospital. They physically destroyed my laboratory, which was unique throughout the world. And all of this because I had discovered a lever that patients could pull to be free from their piles of pills and complicated surgical procedures that were far from safe. But of course, this is the mainstay of pharmacology, and thousands of surgeons have won State prizes. What, after all, is easier: to recognise a discovery and decrease your own specific weight or to accuse the author of pseudoscience? The latter is easier and more profitable…

Much has changed today, but those who simply criticised the Method previously are now trying to ram the genie back into the bottle from which it had begun to emerge. The discovery seems to have been recognised, but there’s just one tiny catch. A trifling reservation crept into the decision.1 They say the Method only cures asthma, mild asthma at that, instead of the list of 150 diseases that I compiled during my decades of medical practice. Well, what of it. I spent 30 years working with diseases, and in five millennia, everyone will recognise my work, you’ll see. Of course, there might not be anyone left to treat…

Nevertheless, for you who are suffering from the basic diseases included in the significantly shortened list below, I resolutely declare: they can be treated with my Method! Every last one! But there’s no need to shout about it being a panacea – only the uneducated would think so. How can it be a panacea when the list contains a few dozen illnesses but modern medicine recognises around 30 thousand. This is a mere fraction, but they are the most common. That’s the whole point. I would stake my life on every line, but only for those who believe that the Method is the only chance of deliverance. People who believe in massages, acupuncture and yogi-mogis and shmogis had better not practice the Method. It only helps those who are its complete supporters. Not because it involves some kind of hypnosis or some other kind of suggestion, as my enemies claim. No, the Method is completely physiological – but half-hearted belief is always worse than disbelief.

1 Translator’s note: this may be a reference to the Order of the Soviet Ministry of Health on Measures to introduce the method of the volitional regulation of the depth of breath in the treatment of asthma, 30 April 1985.

Yes, now, today, and not in 5,000 years time (when it will be possible, but too late), being of sound mind and memory, I declare: my discovery of the diseases of deep breathing revolutionises the whole of medicine!
K.P. Buteyko